Authors: Dudley Pope
He managed to suppress a sigh of relief. There was no ship of the line with the French convoy, only four frigates against their two. He had been sentencing himself and the Surcoufs to death for the past five minutes, when with only four frigates there was a chance. Not the sort of chance many men would want to take at a gaming table, but certainly not one that would bother the Captain.
Yesterday evening Southwick had asked the Captain what he expected the French to send, and had been told that since it was an important convoy, with mostly naval and military supplies, he would expect six merchant ships or transports, with an escort of at least four or five frigates and perhaps a ship of the line. Not a new 74-gun ship but possibly an old 64. If the convoy comprised a dozen ships he would expect five or six frigates and a 74-gun ship.
Southwick had questioned the size of the escort, pointing out that a British convoy homeward-bound from Jamaica would be lucky to have three frigates to escort a hundred ships. The Captain had pointed out that while we could sail large convoys with small escorts, the French could only sail small convoys with large escorts. We had many ships of war at sea, but most of the French fleet was blockaded by British squadrons at Brest and Toulon.
“Sir, the
Juno
's coming up to short stay,” the quartermaster reported. He seemed to have noticed that his commanding officer was preoccupied, and Aitken cursed under his breath. He must stop daydreaming. He picked up the speaking-trumpet and hailed Lacey. It was going to be the very devil of an afternoon, and he was glad that the men had finished dinner before
La Créole
's first signal had been sighted.
In the
Juno
Ramage waited patiently for the first flag in the next group of signals from the schooner to give him Wagstaffe's estimate of the French convoy's speed. The one after that would tell him something of the formation they were in. Then would come the signal telling him whether the convoy was following the coast to go inside the Diamond or staying outside. Once
La Créole
had told him all that, only the final signal remained. That gave the moment when Wagstaffe judged that the two frigates should leave Petite Anse d'Arlet and sail down to the Diamond to appear in sight of the French and spring the trap. It was putting a lot of responsibility on Wagstaffe's shoulders but there was no choice because the alternative was to risk the French sighting the
Juno
and
Surcouf
too soon.
The capstan had been pawled and the men were resting after their spell at the bars. The pace of events was slow enough at the moment for the men to have time to feel the heat. They were unwilling to stand still in bare feet on the scorching deck and he knew that the fo'c's'le must be like a furnace. Half a dozen men had lowered the quarterdeck awning; in a few minutes it would be lashed up and stowed below out of the way.
The masthead lookout hailed the deck and Paolo trained his telescope. “Number five, sir.” He consulted the list of signals and added: “
Convoy making five knots,
sir.” There must be much more wind out there if it was making five knots. It was ten miles to the beginning of the Fours Channel, so the French would take two hours to get to the door of the trap. It would take the
Juno
and the
Surcouf
less than an hour, at the same speed, to get into position.
“
La Créole
's signalling again, sir,” Paolo Orsini said, beating the masthead lookout's hail. “Number nine.
Convoy in loose standard formation,
sir.”
That meant that the convoy was in two or three columns, with a frigate ahead and astern and one on either beam, although they would very soon shift the frigate on the land side out to seaward. That told Ramage much of what he wanted to know: the French were not expecting trouble, otherwise the merchant-men would be bunched up. Fear was the only certain recipe for good station-keeping. The escort must be expecting one British frigate at most, and they would be confident they could drive her off. Most French frigates had 36 guns, four more than the majority of the British, and they rarely put to sea with a ship's company of less than three hundred. They might even have seen
La Créole,
identified her as a French privateer, and concluded that the British had lifted the blockade.
The Master came up to the quarterdeck to report that everything was ready forward and Ramage looked at his watch. “We won't be weighing for another hour, Mr Southwick. Hoist out the boats, and then beat to quarters. We'll have time to get guns loaded and run out before we leave here. If we have enough grommets, get fifteen extra roundshot on deck for each gun. And make sure the men keep the head pumps busy, wetting the deck every few minutes, in this heat.”
He thought for a moment and remembered that all the Marines were in the
Surcouf .
“Let's have every musket and pistol on board ready and loaded: stack them along the centre-line if necessary, if there aren't enough hooks for them.”
“D'you want grappling irons rigged, sir?”
Ramage shook his head. “We'll have no need of them. And,” he added, trying to make his voice sound casual, “make sure the carpenter has a good supply of shot plugs ready ⦔
The stay tackle was hooked on and the launch was hoisted off the booms amidships, swung over the side and lowered. While it was being hauled aft, where it would tow astern, one of the cutters was being hooked on. Fifteen minutes later the
Juno
's four boats were astern, out of the way. Leaving them stowed on board in their normal position would have meant a grave risk of enemy shot shattering them and hurling lethal showers of splinters over the men at the guns. Splinters caused more casualties than actual shot. Towed astern the boats were out of the way and far less likely to be damaged.
While some men were hauling at the stay tackle, others were hurrying round the deck placing the grommets, thick rope rings, in which shot would rest like grotesque black eggs in a nest. Arms chests were hoisted up from below and muskets taken out and loaded, the first of them being put in the racks on the inside of the bulwarks between the guns. Loaded pistols, cutlasses and tomahawks were hung on hooks beside them, while the long boarding-pikes, their ash handles well varnished, were stowed vertically in their racks round the masts, looking from a distance like bundles of steel-tipped fascines.
Now the crews of each gun were going through the loading procedure, working on their own because there were no officers to give them orders. The locks had been brought up from the magazine and secured to the breech of the guns, the flints had been checked and the trigger lines coiled up and placed on the breeches. The tompions protecting the muzzles of the guns had been taken out, the tackles overhauled so the ropes would run freely. Sponge and match tubs were being rolled into position and filled from a head pump rigged amidships which had already wetted the decks.
Down below, heavy blankets soaked with water had been hung up, surrounding the approaches to the magazine, so that no flash from an explosion could get through and detonate the powder stored there. Already the gunner was in the magazine itself, wearing felt slippers (shoes might set off loose powder), passing the cartridges through the blanket fire screens to waiting boys who slid them into the cylindrical wooden cartridge boxes, slipped the lids on and brought them up on deck, where they waited along the centre line behind their particular guns until called by the gun captains.
Black leather fire buckets with
“Juno”
painted on them were also being topped up with water at the head pump and put back on their hooks under the quarterdeck rail, where they would swing with the roll of the ship and not spill. The fire engine would be hauled out and its cistern filled with water. In the ward-room Bowen was preparing his instruments and his assistant was winding bandages. The wardroom table had been scrubbed and lines put ready to hold writhing men. Beside it was an empty tub, the receptacle for “wings and limbs” in case amputations were necessary.
Normally when the
Juno
went into action her Captain and Master were on the quarterdeck, with the four lieutenants at the guns, each commanding a division. Now Ramage was relying entirely on the gun captains, who were trained seamen but nevertheless accustomed to having an officer behind them bellowing orders through the thick smoke and noise of battle. He had assembled all the gun captains and second captains earlier and told them to use their common sense. The moment they heard Ramage tell them to open fire, they were to continue as long as their guns would bear, but they must fire steadily, with every shot well aimed.
La Créole
was still in sight running west for two or three miles from Diamond Hill and then beating back, always in sight of the
Juno
and of the French, her Tricolour flying. Behaving, in fact, just as the French officers in the convoy would expect a privateer to behave. She was fast enough to ignore the current; her great fore and aft sails drove her through the water as though she were a skimming dish.
Less than half an hour after giving the series of orders to Southwick, Ramage walked round the ship, listening always for a hail from the masthead or quarterdeck warning of another signal from
La Créole,
talking with the men and inspecting the positions. There had been enough grommets for twenty extra rounds to be stored beside each gun, in addition to those always kept in the shot garlands along the bulwarks and round the coamings.
He peered into the cistern of the fire engine, examined the stands of muskets, sent for the carpenter and listened to his report that shot plugs, boards and tools were ready, heard from a bosun's mate that the tiller tackles were in position, ready to be rigged if the wheel was shot away, and preventer stays prepared in case masts were damaged.
Satisfied that the ship was ready for action, he had an encouraging word with each of the gun captains and went down to his cabin to collect his pistols and sword. Back on the quarterdeck a look through the telescope showed that the
Surcouf
's guns were run out, her boats in the water astern, and Aitken walking up and down the quarterdeck with enviable nonchalance. Obviously he was satisfied that his ship was ready and, like Ramage, impatient for the final signal from
La Créole.
The
Surcouf
had fine lines; the French certainly designed handsome ships. The sheer had a graceful sweep and the bow a pleasing flare. Any captain would be pleased with her appearance, and Ramage knew that few admirals would find fault with her. Yet in three hours she might be reduced to a shattered hulk, lying dead in the water with her masts hanging over the side in a tangle of rigging, her hull and decks torn up by roundshot.
He shivered despite the heat. The
Juno
could be close to her in the same condition with not a dozen men alive in both ships to raise a cheer or cry for quarter. In considering the number of ships, the odds were only two to one in favour of the French, but in numbers of men (and that was what counted in the end) the odds were about nine to one because there would be about 1200 Frenchmen in their four frigates.
Nine to one.
It was the first time he had reduced his gamble to actual figures, and it frightened him. Two frigates against four seemed acceptable, but one of his men against nine Frenchmen was monstrous. What right had he to take his handful of men into battle against such odds? They all trusted him, from Southwick and Aitken to the cook's mate and the youngest powder monkey: the sight of the two frigates with their guns run out was proof of that. They trusted him to work out the odds and only ask of them what was reasonable. He had abused their trust. He held out his hands and clenched all but one of his fingers. Nine to one. If you committed suicide, the Church would not allow your body to be buried in consecrated ground. It was just as well that the sea obligingly accepted whatever it was offered. Then he remembered that not five minutes earlier he had pictured the
Juno
and
Surcouf
drifting, shattered shells, manned by corpses, and he cursed his imagination: it killed men and sank ships before their time.
A
S THE
Juno
stretched close-hauled down the coast, making a bare five knots and with the
Surcouf
following in her wake two hundred yards astern, the headland formed by Diamond Hill was fine on the larboard bow. The wind was fluking round the peak and freshening. Ramage guessed that once they were out of the lee of the land it would probably be from the east-north-east.
Diamond Rock had just come in sight clear of the headland and Ramage could see
La Créole
a couple of miles beyond it, well placed to give Wagstaffe a clear view of the convoy approaching the Fours Channel from the east still unaware that two British frigates were coming down from the north-west.
Wagstaffe had made no more signals, apart from reporting that the convoy was following the coast. He must be confident that it would reach the trap of the Fours Channel just as the
Juno
and
Surcouf
arrived to spring it. Leaving him with the responsibility of timing the operation had put a heavy load on the shoulders of the
Juno
's former Second Lieutenant. At first it had worried Ramage that so young a man could wreck everything through carelessness or nervousness. But the young Londoner had impressed him at last evening's conference in the cabin: he had asked several questions that revealed a quick and lively mind, not nervousness or indecision.
Ramage looked astern once again. The
Surcouf
was a fine sight in the
Juno
's wake, topsails and topgallants filled in taut curves, her guns rows of stubby black fingers, pointing menacingly through the ports, her bow wave like a white moustache flowing up from the cutwater. Within half an hour the guns would be belching smoke, but for the moment gulls wheeled round her and flying fish flashed low over the water, silver darts aimed without targets.